Description:
MapLooper is a live-looping system for gesture-to-sound mappings.
We developed a connectivity infrastructure for wireless embedded musical instruments with distributed mapping and synchronization. We evaluated our infrastructure in the context of the real-time constraints of music performance. We measured a round-trip latency of 4.81 ms when mapping signals at 100 Hz with embedded libmapper and an average inter-onset delay of 3.03 ms for synchronizing with Ableton Link. On top of this infrastructure, we developed MapLooper: a live-looping tool with 2 example musical applications: a harp synthesizer with SuperCollider and embedded source-filter synthesis with FAUST on ESP32. Our system is based on a novel approach to mapping, extrapolating from using FIR and IIR filters on gestural data to using delay-lines as part of the mapping of DMIs. Our system features rhythmic time quantization and a flexible loop manipulation system for creative musical exploration.
We open-source all of our components:
- MapLooper – landing repository
- compat-idf – A set of compatibility functions for esp-idf
- libmapper-arduino – An Arduino library for using libmapper
- libmapper-esp – libmapper esp-idf component
- link-esp – Ableton Link component for esp-idf
- MapLooper-gui – MapLooper JUCE-based GUI
- MapLooper-faust – FAUST example with MapLooper
- MapperUGen – A SuperCollider UGen for using libmapper
(esp-idf is: Espressif IoT Development Framework, the official development framework for ESP32)
IDMIL Participants:
Research Areas:
Publications:
- Frisson, C., Bredholt, M., Malloch, J., Wanderley, M. M. (2021). MapLooper: Live-looping of distributed gesture-to-sound mappings. In Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2021). Shanghai, China.
- Bredholt, M. (2021). Live-looping of Distributed Gesture-to-sound Mappings. In M.A. Thesis, McGill University (pp. 76). Montreal, Canada.
